Great Moments in Government, from Banning Bake Sales to Limiting Mistresses

Michelle Obama wants the federal government to tell us what kind of food to eat.

I actually wouldn’t object if she merely used a bully pulpit to encourage healthier eating. But the busy-body crowd in Washington has a hard time distinguishing between giving advice and engaging in coercion.

So we now have legislation that gives Washington the power to interfere with food in local schools.

But not everybody is rolling over, particularly when federal rules are coercing states into banning bake sales. The National Journal reports on growing resistance to this absurd example of nanny statism from Washington. Here are some excerpts.

…states are…fighting nutrition standards that would considerably alter one of the most sacred rituals of the American public school system: bake sales. Twelve states have established their own policies to circumvent regulations in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 that apply to “competitive snacks,” or any foods and beverages sold to students on school grounds that are not part of the Agriculture Department’s school meal programs, according to the National Association of State Boards of Education. Competitive snacks appear in vending machines, school stores, and food and beverages, including items sold at bake sales. …The pushback is not about students’ taste buds, but their wallets. Food fundraisers are a crucial source of revenue for schools, state education officials say. “Tough economic times have translated into fewer resources and these fundraisers allow our schools to raise a considerable amount of money for very worthwhile education programs,” the Georgia Department of Education wrote in a recent press release. …The statement called the federal guidelines on fundraisers “an absolute overreach of the federal government.”

Kudos to the Georgia officials who complained about government overreach.

But don’t forget that local governments certainly are capable of overreach as well, as this cartoon illustrates.

If you think banning bake sales is an example of government run amok, then you’ll be equally perturbed by what’s happening in California.

According to the Associated Press, some residents are being put in a no-win situation of being fined by either state or local government based on whether or not they water their lawns.

I’m not joking. Check out these blurbs from the story.

Laura Whitney and her husband, Michael Korte, don’t know whether they’re being good citizens during a drought or scofflaws. On the same day the state approved mandatory outdoor watering restrictions with the threat of $500 fines, the Southern California couple received a letter from their city threatening a $500 penalty for not watering their brown lawn. …They’re among residents caught in the middle of conflicting government messages as the need for conservation clashes with the need to preserve attractive neighborhoods. “My friends in Los Angeles got these letters warning they could be fined if they water, and I got a letter warning that I could be fined for not watering,” Whitney said. “I felt like I was in an alternate universe.”

But at least we can take comfort in the fact that governments outside of America engage in equally silly actions.

Though I confess I’m not sure how to categorize the news that’s being reported by the BBC. As you can see from these excerpts, there’s apparently now a rule in China limiting public officials to no more than three mistresses.

We’ve heard a lot about China’s far-reaching anti-corruption campaign at the behest of President Xi Jinping. …But according to a report in the English-language newspaper China Daily, “adultery” is now banned for party members. …But just when you thought the party was taking a puritanical stand, the newspaper said that when authorities had previously accused officials of “moral corruption” they defined this as having more than “three mistresses”.

The Princess of the Levant didn’t allow me to engage in any field research on this issue during my recent trip to Shanghai, so I can’t comment on the accuracy of the story.

5 Responses

Michelle isn’t even up on the latest information. I doubt she even does any research. She just wants to tell everyone what to do. If she would have stuck with the simple ‘Let’s Move’, that would have been okay. Why not tie it in with the stuff Richard Simmons is already doing?

There is likely no such thing as an optimal nutrition for everyone. The issue is likely to prove much more complex than Michelle Obama and — most importantly – her voter-lemmings find comfort in believing.

It’s an issue that demonstrates the second most pernicious aspect of coercive collectivism.
The first is the inevitable redistribution which inevitably leads to lower motivation for both competent and mediocre, which in turn leads to lower growth, which in turn means deterministic decline, almost by arithmetic definition.

The second issue is that a society where everything must be put to a vote, a society where some shifting majority controls every aspect of your life, is a society driven by average intelligence (the average intelligence of the average voter) rather than the cumulative intelligence of all members (competent and less competent free to apply their ideas in an unrestricted society).

The issue with optimal diet, food groups, pyramids, cylinders,… optimal sleep, optimal BMI, optimal activity level, optimal body washing habits, ideal amount of wax in ears, ideal moisture content of boogers… and a slew of other one size fits all humans, all races, at all latitudes, all activity levels, all ages, al genders, all stress levels, all family situations, etc. is that there is likely no such thing. But uniformity has a certain calming effect on most humans who stress over complexity and, (especially) are naturally and instinctively suspicious of what other, more intelligent people are thinking, or may be up to (BTW, I think this, fear of more intelligent people, is one of the fundamental psychological drivers behind the attractiveness of coercive collectivism and its derivative, an imposing state driven by majoritarianism) and hence a subtle but instinctive desire to control descends upon a majority of voter-lemmings.

These, of course, would be all moral issues, luxuries, the relativism of preferences against other people’s preferences. The problem is that both issues (motivation flattening redistribution and subjecting all preferences of life to a homogenizing vote) are associated with lower growth. And because growth compounds, lower growth means an inevitable destiny of decline, compared to others who will grow faster and get to move ahead on the fantastical things of the future that one day soon will become prerequisites for a good life. But coervcive collectivism tendencies are almost universal amongst a majority of human voter-lemmings. Hence, few societies escape the inevitable cycle of decline, and it seems like it’s finally America’s turn to tumble.